What Did You Say? (4)
An interior thick with acrid smoke.
“Open.”
“He’s dead.”
“Damn it, this table’s been cleaned out too.”
The tiles clacked incessantly as they were tossed and turned.
Even the onlookers, having realized just how much money was on the line, had crowded in around them, yet an odd silence hung over the round table where the tiles were being passed back and forth.
“Three.”
“I’ve got three too.”
“Hah. I’ve got a three. Looks like this one’s mine.”
Bundles of silver and gold coins—sums most people would never even touch in their entire lives—flashed around like toys. Watching that spectacle, the eyes of the crowd gradually reddened with greed.
“I lost.”
The wandering swordsman in a red robe casually tossed his tiles onto the round table. He had lost three silver-and-gold coins in one go, but there was no trace of regret or anger on his face.
What an idiot.
Chaegyu barely managed to suppress the smile threatening to spread across his face.
Even if the man kept a calm expression on the outside, he was probably drying up inside, his mouth parched and his throat burning. The people who sat down at gambling tables came from every walk of life, but the emotions they felt as they watched their stakes disappear were all much the same.
It was worth admitting, at least, that he wasn’t showing how anxious he was becoming. If this had been any other gambling den, he might even have walked away with a modest sum. But this Huanyewon was not the sort of place where one could get out simply by pretending to remain composed.
Little by little. Very slowly.
This place gnawed away at a man’s money the way a swamp swallowed people whole.
“One!”
“Five.”
“Six.”
“...Damn it. What the hell is with all these sixes?”
“I thought I had this one for sure, damn it!”
“That guy’s got some luck. How much is he pulling in from one round?”
In front of the red-robed man, a mound of silver-and-gold coins rose higher and higher after he won the big round. In an instant, he had recovered about half of what he had lost so far.
Yet Chaegyu, frowning as though in a foul mood, felt differently inside. The reason was simple: he had deliberately thrown that round.
Unless one was a fool, no one could fail to notice their stake shrinking. The bold ones might gamble right down to their last coin, hoping for a last-second reversal, but most people, once they had lost half their money, grew frightened and left the table.
Can’t have that.
So he had to give them a taste every so often. He had to keep them from losing hope that one good hand might let them win everything back at once.
Heh.
The corner of Chaegyu’s mouth twitched.
Gambling was supposed to be about the thrill of winning money, but watching a human being fall into ruin was its own indispensable form of entertainment. In that sense, this round table today was truly perfect.
“I’ve got one.”
“One.”
“Four. Heh heh heh. Sorry about this.”
The tiles kept moving back and forth, and the mountain of silver-and-gold coins piled before the wandering swordsman slowly began to shrink again. It had seemed almost impossible to lose all that money, yet before long it was nearly gone.
For an ordinary person, this would have been enough to send them over the edge.
But the red-robed swordsman still stared at the table with the same indifferent eyes as before.
At last.
“I win.”
With a triumphant expression, Chaegyu swept up the stakes on the table. In front of him and his companions, silver-and-gold coins formed a tower. But before the red-robed swordsman, there was no more money left to be seen.
“My, my. Looks like all your stakes have vanished.”
“Well now, what a shame.”
The three men laughed awkwardly.
“Still got any money left? If not, I’m afraid you’ll have to step away.”
The red-robed swordsman lowered his gaze to the place where his money had been piled, then slowly lifted his head again.
“I’ve got no money left.”
“Tsk, tsk. Looks like today just wasn’t your day. Maybe next time.”
“That’s how it goes sometimes. Take this and go on.”
The men each picked up one of the silver-and-gold coins before them and slid it toward the man in the robe.
Three silver-and-gold coins.
For an ordinary person, it was an enormous sum, but compared to the money the swordsman had lost today, it was hardly money at all.
As the man stared at the three coins, the corner of his mouth slowly curled upward.
“...I don’t have money. But I do have something to wager.”
“We only take money here.”
“You’ll be taking it.”
“...Huh?”
Chaegyu furrowed his brow slightly and looked at the man.
Tsk. He’d have been better off just leaving after losing money.
That was when Chaegyu, his hand lowering beneath the table, casually closed his fingers around the sword hilt at his waist.
“Before that... let me ask one thing.”
“...What?”
The swordsman slowly leaned back into the chair. Then he let his head droop backward.
A chill prickled along Chaegyu’s nape.
What is this?
He was startled, unable to understand the change in himself. It wasn’t as though he were afraid of the man in front of him, so why was his body reacting like this?
Then the swordsman’s voice cut through his ears.
“Is it fun?”
“....”
Chaegyu, his eyes flashing with caution, narrowed them.
“What are you talking about?”
“Exactly what I said.”
The swordsman’s head slowly returned to its proper position. His long, filthy bangs still hid his eyes. Because of that, Chaegyu had no way of knowing exactly how those eyes were fixed on him.
“Is it fun?”
“...You crazy bastard...”
Chaegyu exchanged glances with the men seated beside him. If the swordsman tried anything foolish, they needed to be ready to deal with it at once.
The swordsman went on.
“The stakes. Yes, there’s no money left. But there’s still something left to bet.”
“...What is it?”
“Your lives.”
The man’s dusky lips curled into a chilling smile.
“...Damn it. We only take money here!”
“What are you waiting for? Drag this bastard out!”
At that moment, the swordsman lightly waved his hand. The red robe rippled.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not talking about staking my own head.”
“...What?”
“Not my life—yours.”
“...He’s insane.”
“No. Everyone at this table. Better yet, everyone in Hangzhou. Maybe everyone in the entire Central Plains.”
Only then did Chaegyu realize that something about this situation was terribly wrong.
He was not the sort of man who would normally sit there and listen to this kind of nonsense. How many gamblers who lost everything and kicked up a fuss had he seen in this very place? Under ordinary circumstances, he would already have drawn his blade and cut off one of the bastard’s limbs before throwing him out. If not that, he would have taken his head.
And yet...
Why am I just sitting here and listening to this bullshit?
“Let me ask you something.”
The swordsman spoke slowly.
“How much are your lives worth?”
“....”
“It’s because you have those lives that you can bury yourselves in the gutter and still laugh, isn’t it? So I’m asking. How much are those lives worth? I need to know if I’m going to take that money.”
The man sitting beside Chaegyu, Yomho of Gui-gyeonsu, could no longer hold himself back and roared, “You damn bastard, who do you think you’re talking to? My life is worth what? Why should I be the one paying you for it...!”
That was the instant it happened.
The swordsman lifted a hand lightly.
And then Yomho’s body flew across the round table as if dragged by some invisible force, as though he were tied to something and being hauled in.
What?
The abrupt, unnatural sight froze Chaegyu in place.
Crash! Bang! Clatter!
The tiles and silver-and-gold coins scattered across the table were sent flying in all directions.
The money they had so painstakingly won went scattering everywhere, but Chaegyu’s eyes did not go to the coins. No, he could not even look at them. The swordsman’s hand was clenched around Yomho’s face, the man now sprawled across the table.
H-how...?
Cold sweat ran slick down Chaegyu’s back.
Forceful object seizure from a distance?
Nothing else could explain what he was seeing.
But even that interpretation made no sense. Drawing even a single object toward oneself with qi was something only those who had reached a near-mythical level could do.
So how in the world could he use qi to pull not an object, but a person? And not just any person, either, but someone like Yomho of Gui-gyeonsu?
While Chaegyu struggled to make sense of the impossible scene before him, the red-robed swordsman slowly pulled Yomho, whom he still held by the face, closer with a languid motion of his hand.
“Why am I taking it?”
A ghastly smile crept across the man’s black lips.
“Because the reason is painfully simple. Your lives are nothing more than collateral now. The reason everyone in this Central Plains can keep on living is because the cult still allows it.”
“Kh... khh...”
“But that’s a shame. No matter how I look at it, your lives don’t seem to be worth a single coin. Such cheap, useless lives.”
“Krrr... AAAAAAAAGH!”
Veins of blue-black blood began to bulge across Yomho’s entire body. Trembling violently as though countless steel needles had been driven into him, he thrashed in agony.
And then Chaegyu saw it clearly.
Yomho’s body, visible beneath his clothing, was drying up and splitting apart like a rice paddy left to crack in a drought.
That...
Even then, the swordsman remained calm, casually using his other hand to brush back his bangs.
“Ugh...”
Without realizing it, Chaegyu took a step back.
The man’s eyes, now revealed from beneath his hair, were frighteningly red. Not merely tinged with red—those eyes looked as though blood itself had pooled in them.
His dusky lips, his pale skin, and those blood-colored eyes filled Chaegyu with a terror he had never felt before in his life.
“Kuaaaah...”
Yomho’s convulsing body finally went limp.
Thunk.
Like a mummified corpse, Yomho’s dried-up remains collapsed miserably across the round table. Replacing the money and tiles that had once been there was a wretched corpse, already growing cold.
“Th... this...”
“Pathetic things.”
The swordsman’s aura changed in an instant.
As he slowly rose to his feet, a terrifying energy spilled out from him. Merely facing it was enough to choke the breath from one’s lungs and make the blood surge backward through the body.
“Wh... who... are you...?”
Chaegyu asked with a trembling body, barely managing to force the words out.
Rebellion? Resistance?
He did not even dare think of such things.
This was not a matter of power alone. The difference in rank, in a level too vast to even describe, had frozen him like a rat before a serpent.
“Who am I?”
The man in the red robe slowly shook his head.
“That’s hard to answer. I’m a man without a name.”
“....”
He twisted his mouth into a slight sneer.
“If you think about it, maybe all of this is just a desperate struggle to earn one.”
At the same time, a bloody radiance began to leak from his eyes.
Chaegyu did not understand a single word of it, but that hardly mattered. A person did not need to worry about what happened after he was dead.
His body was suddenly yanked toward the swordsman’s hand.
“Ghk!”
The man seized his throat at once and stared directly into Chaegyu’s eyes.
“Compared to that worthless price, this is such an honorable death. Isn’t it?”
“Y... you lunatic...”
Crack-crack-crunch.
The bones throughout his body began to smash and twist inward.
“Khh... aaagh...!”
Chaegyu’s body collapsed to the floor before he could even let out a proper death cry. His entire frame had folded grotesquely as though every bone in him had been twisted out of place.
Shock, disbelief, and above all else fear pressed down over the gambling hall.
The man, coldly gazing at those who had turned rigid like mice before a snake, spoke as though to himself.
“Pile up corpses into mountains...”
“....”
“Kill and kill and kill until the blood makes the sea...”
Step.
He took one step forward.
“Then everyone in this world will come to know what’s happening here. Yes, everyone.”
“Ugh...”
Someone’s terrified moan spread through the silent gambling hall.
Blood-red light poured from the man’s eyes as he raised one hand high.
Kiiiiiiing!
The pitch-black force that burst from his fingertips pierced through the gambling hall’s ceiling like a blade of utter darkness.
“Heavenly Demon Has Returned, All Demons Rejoice!”
The man’s shriek, like the wail of a ghost, thundered through the hall.
“Your worthless lives will become our cry. Our scream sent to the one who has returned to this world somewhere beyond the horizon!”
Kwaaaaaaaaaaang!
The buildings packed tightly into the back alleys of Hangzhou exploded all at once like a chain of firecrackers.
It was a cry, and a scream. The rabid shriek of fanatics that had echoed into the world again after a hundred years.